Having been caught out by the severity of the last 2 winters, we were a bit better prepared this year, when the cold weather arrived early. The last week has been very cold, but the carrots we lifted at the end of October, and the parsnips lifted after earlier frosts in November have all been easily accessible for suppers in their simple wooden drawers filled with damp chainsaw shavings. It certainly beats trying to chisel vegetables from deeply frozen soil.

This year the carrots were simply hosed off in situ in their Big Bags, the foliage given to the poultry who seem to prefer this to the actual carrot roots , and then the roots laid closely in layers with the shavings with the boxes then being placed in our frost free outbuilding. The Hubbard squash were also hung up in empty bulb nets from the barn rafters, and are another fantastic delicious and versatile vegetable which it’s nice to be able to nip out and grab quickly on a grotty winter’s day.

Driving back from our last film/talk of the year given to the Cardigan Horticultural Society this week, we thought we’d had a good journey home on well gritted roads until we climbed out of Llanybydder towards the summit at King’s Cross. We suddenly hit dense fog for the last 2 miles, which as result of the sub zero temperatures was freezing fog, and by morning this had coated much foliage in the garden with the stunning ice crystal trimmings of a December rime….

Inside the greenhouse these very low temperatures, which produced at dawn a reading of minus 14 degrees C on the metal ridge, have resulted in some fantastic ice crystal formations which surpassed any etched glass designs that I’ve ever seen….

But before giving an update on how the greenhouse compost heating project has fared under these testing conditions, I’m going to digress to touch on a subject I’ve had a few weeks to mull over. (The horrific events and tragedy in the last 24 hours at the primary school in Connecticut, America may mean that some readers may want to skip the next section as being too raw)…

Several studies have shown that most prospective veterinary students list a ‘love of animals’ as one of their primary reasons for choosing a career in veterinary medicine, yet post graduation after a couple of years in general practice a similar question asking what veterinary surgeons find most appealing about their work generates a different view. Problem solving, technical challenges or dealing with the public are likely to figure above the actual appeal of working with animals. Indeed this change was probably personally evident as I followed my own career path in the field of small animal (pet) medicine and surgery, and established my own veterinary practice in Bristol.

A significant element of the work of a small animal vet involves the counselling and actual carrying out of euthanasia of family pets. All of the vets who I ever worked alongside took this task very seriously, but perhaps it’s only very recently with several years distancing me from this regularly performed act that I’ve thought a little more about it.

In my veterinary education, little discussion or formal advice was given on this sensitive area. You picked up tips and developed your own approach from observation of experienced mentor vets whilst ‘seeing practice’, and of course as a result of personal experience down the years. It was critical to perform the task both technically well and sensitively. Meaningful emotional involvement with the pet owners was difficult in most cases, and perhaps unwise. Does this regular taking of life insidiously alter veterinary surgeons’ views of what they find rewarding about the job in the longer term?

I do remember fairly late in my career becoming aware of  a few strange ‘synchronicities’ involving music around the time that pets were euthanased in their owner’s homes. Was I becoming too detached from the task in hand, if I was even noticing what music was playing in the background, as I carried out the euthanasia? Or was it a subtle prompt for me to reassess whether it was right for me to continue in general practice?

The first occasion involved an elderly Alsatian where the owner had started to play an Eric Clapton album shortly after we arrived. Just as the dog lost consciousness the lyrics caught my attention: “Knock, Knock, Knockin on heaven’s door……”. Had the owner planned this to be, or was it a ‘chance’ occurence?

Secondly a woman discussed with me at length, in advance, her desire to have her elderly dog ‘Put to Sleep’ at home. She specifically wanted to hold it in her arms as it was given the lethal injection. I explained that whilst this might be possible, with an elderly dog we tried to use an experienced nurse to raise the vein for the injection and limit any possible struggling or distress. In the event when the call came, the dog had collapsed on the stair’s landing in the owner’s home, and in this awkward position it was still possible for the owner to cradle the pet, whilst Fiona raised the vein and the injection was administered. It was at this precise moment that I heard the radio in the adjacent kitchen had just started playing a song by Cutting Crew…. ” I just died in your arms tonight”.

Undoubtedly the most powerful of these moments involved a much loved elderly ginger tabby which I’d cared for over a number of years. In the owner’s living room after a final cuddle, the cat, seemingly sensing what was about to happen, clung to the owner’s pullover and had to be gently but firmly prised away, whilst it fixed me with an apparently knowing stare. On this occasion Fiona had accompanied me to hold the cat whilst the lethal injection was given, when of course the switched-into-competence-mode-professional denies any vital eye contact as the needle-vein-solution link has to be made.

Unusually as we bade our farewells after the event and left the owners to grieve, I felt emotionally drained, and even tearful.

We got into the car, and turning the ignition on, were greeted by Classic FM on the car radio. And the opening bars of the hauntingly beautiful theme from Schindler’s List by John Williams, and played with such emotional intensity by Itzhak Perlman’s violin.

Just before posting, I googled the issue of occupational associations with suicide incidence in the UK, and not entirely to my surprise found that many of the recently published studies relate to the very high relative rate amongst veterinary surgeons. I shall quote a small abstract from a paper published in 2010 by Bartram and Baldwin in the profession’s UK publication, The Veterinary Record :

So perhaps leaving behind my M.R.C.V.S. all those years ago wasn’t such a bad move after all……

But now, at this time of the year, 7 years removed from making such life and death decisions and actions on an almost daily basis, and after living for several years with no animal dependants at all, I’ve had to face the issue again. But from a different standpoint. As a Turkey rearer.

And some of these fascinating, engaging social creatures which have surpassed my expectations as domesticated animals, and given me so many interesting moments over the last few months, are to be killed. By the hand that they’ve grown to trust and depend upon.

Shall I ever be able to rant at the radio as yet another example of corrupt practice by our leaders, movers and shakers is revealed to the world? How does the moral compass of the farmer-rearer-consumer spin and settle? Are these decisions really any harder than the countless hundreds taken by me years ago under the cloak of professional advice and competence? Will it become more easy in years to come? I hope not, since a sense of loss and reverence is surely appropriate for the farmer-rearer in these circumstances.

As it turned out, eye contact was again avoided, and as the first bird was quickly being plucked by us both as the warmth ebbed away, under the cover of the old cowshed roof but in the open air as a heavy shower swept in from the South West, perhaps another melancholic synchronicity? From out of sight in the cloud laden sky came the unmistakeable sad call of a Red Kite, drifting through the moist air of the yard. Rarely heard here, and certainly not for many months, since last spring. Did it mourn the loss?

Some reverential moment or memorial is appropriate for lives well lived, and this interaction with the hands that fed them, and later killed them. Having spent a bit of time researching the importance of the wild turkey in many North American Indian tribes, not just as a food bird, but having important mystical or spiritual elements in their culture, I came across a tribe name I’d not encountered before. The Catawba, who inhabited an area of what is now South Carolina, were essentially sedentary agricultural people who also fished and hunted for game. The Wikipedia link shows a photo of tribal members with traditional turkey feather head dresses, and also mentions that the tribe used to practice infant head flattening, and had a religion based upon a different trinity of Creator (Manatou), Son of Creator and Turtle (Kaia). (I’ll include a link here to Joseph Campbell, an American academic and teacher who studied in depth commonalities amongst religions and myths from around the world and through the ages, and being very knowledgeable about the culture of native North American tribes. In many ways being introduced to his work years ago by a veterinary colleague, made me decide to “Follow My Bliss“, a simple life philosophy of Campbell’s and is probably partly why I now write these blogs. I discovered for the first time from the Wikipedia link above that Campbell spent 5 early years of his life reading at length around these topics whilst living in a simple wooden hut with no running water near Woodstock, for 12 hours a day… Sounds a bit like winter months at Gelli…).

But why had the name Catawba resonated deep in my consciousness? Then it clicked.

One of our favourite Rhododendrons acquired from Nigel Wright in Devon is Rhododendron Catawbiense album. It’s budding up nicely right now and has flowered consistently well every April since we planted it about 4 years ago. And of course the original form of this plant is native to that part of the U.S.A. inhabited by the Catawba tribe, and var. album is a naturally occuring variant. So perhaps beside our Rhododendron is indeed the right place to mark our turkeys’ existence with something more permanent.

With another long post looming, my update on the Greenhouse Compost Bed will be brief for now. Suffice to say that it’s kept the whole Inner Zone frost free through the last very cold week, with a minimum of about 2 degrees C at the coldest end (away from the warm air inflow), and an average minimum over the last fortnight at this point of about 6 degrees C.

‘The Reactor’ also seems to consistently raise the temperature of the air entering the spiral by about 7.5 to 8 degrees C by the time it exits into the greenhouse, regardless of external temperatures. And this is maintained fairly evenly throughout the week.

On the fourth top up today, very slightly less material was required, and I’m getting the first hint that some basal raking out may be needed to make space for new material at the top in due course. But the pattern of higher temperatures at the top of the heap peaking 2 days after topping up ( at around 45 – 50 degrees C on the last 2 occasions), has been maintained, so far. I shall try to add another graph in a week or so to summarise the data thus far, but it might have to wait until after Christmas!

The mushroom which has taken up residence in the compost bed seems to be Coprinus megalocephalus, an Ink Cap classified as rare in my Guide to Mushrooms of Great Britain and Europe by Roger Phillips, and being a mushroom associated with dung (‘Copr’ = faeces).

Thanks to another comment by Dave after my last post, I must also add a  serious caveat and potential health risk associated with compost and it’s handling. There have been a handful of cases of serious respiratory disease in Scotland in the last 4 years associated with handling commercially prepared multi purpose compost in the UK, including a fatality. The cause seems to be an uncommon form of the Legionella bacterium, L. longbeachae. Interestingly none of the articles about compost making on line that I’ve referenced in earlier posts refer to this risk, in spite of the fact that in Australia/New Zealand, it’s been well enough recognised for a few years and has resulted in all bags of compost identifying the risk with a serious health warning. Perhaps the days of UK media gardeners advocating plunging bare hands into compost and inhaling deeply should be confined to history!

It looks like wearing my respiratory visor, which I now routinely don for handling the very alkaline ash from our wood burners and the often dusty and occasionally mouldy wood for fuelling these stoves, will have to be worn when I do anything to the compost bed. In addition wearing gloves, and washing hands after dealing with compost seems a sensible simple precaution. Ah well…